Our visitor author, Carleton Eyster, an Avian Ecologist with Level Blue Conservation Science, has been on the entrance traces of defending Western Snowy Plovers within the San Francisco Bay Space for years. When nests are present in unsafe areas, he works to switch the eggs into care at Worldwide Chicken Rescue, the place chicks can safely hatch and develop.
Eggs are incubated till they hatch at Chicken Rescue the place they’re raised in specifically designed enclosures with sand, vegetation, and different supplies that mimic their pure habitat. Housing hatchlings collectively reduces stress and helps them be taught social cues. As they develop, they transfer to a bigger out of doors area, the place they proceed to develop, meet different shorebirds like American Avocets and Black-necked Stilts, and develop the flight feathers they’ll want for all times within the wild.
This season, 11 younger plovers have been efficiently raised in care and reintroduced to their pure habitat, which incorporates each sandy seashores and bayfront salt panne – seasonal wetlands crucial for nesting and foraging. 5 have been launched at Level Reyes Nationwide Seashore, and 6 have been launched at Novato Baylands. An extra 13 chicks and three eggs stay in care.
Carleton brings a distinct perspective on our sufferers’ backstory: he’s targeted on the long-term options to assist plovers thrive so they could by no means want rescue once more. On this submit, he explains the restoration efforts making these wetlands safer for plovers and the way collaboration throughout organizations is making a brighter future for this at-risk species.
Wetland Connectivity Throughout the San Francisco Bay Space
Wetland restoration is a long-term collaborative effort to assist a wide range of species that depend upon wetland habitats. The Novato Baylands and Montezuma Wetlands Restoration Tasks have the biggest recognized populations of Western Snowy Plovers, a Federally Threatened species, breeding within the northern San Francisco Bay Space/Delta ecosystem.
The Novato Baylands seasonal and tidal wetlands lie in west San Pablo Bay on the outdated Hamilton airfield in Novato, CA. Designed by the USA Corps of Engineers, they’re a part of a multiple-phase, multi-partner restoration challenge that features the Hamilton and Bel Marin Keys Wetlands. These seasonal wetlands supply superb salt panne habitats for nesting species like American Avocets, Black-necked Stilts, and Snowy Plovers. Restoration ecologists and volunteers with Level Blue Conservation Science’s STRAW (College students and Academics Restoring a Watershed) are actively enhancing this important habitat.
At Montezuma Wetlands, biologists discovered Snowy Plovers nesting on newly deposited dredge fill meant to create brackish marsh habitat. To offer them the most effective probability of success, biologists used native oyster shells to assist camouflage nests and chicks. These mix into the salt panne and cut back visibility to predators like coyotes and Frequent Ravens. In some circumstances, small nest exclusion fences have been put in to additional shield weak eggs.
The Montezuma Wetlands Restoration Challenge spans 2,400 acres on the japanese fringe of Suisun Marsh within the San Francisco Bay Delta. This massive-scale restoration effort goals to revive brackish tidal marsh habitat crucial to the restoration of a number of federally listed species together with salt marsh harvest mouse, salmonids, delta and longfin smelt, and California Least Terns.
With the Montezuma Wetlands Restoration Challenge getting into the following part of improvement, and the big pond quickly to be flooded, the staff selected the Novato Baylands as the most effective website to launch fledglings.
Between July and November of 2024, 17 fledgling Snowy Plovers have been launched on the Novato Baylands, the place they built-in into the native flock that roosts and forages there every winter. Every of those birds is uniquely color-banded, so biologists will be capable of monitor their whereabouts.
Keep tuned for Half II: Carlton explains restoration efforts, inventive nesting options, long-term habitat restoration, and constructing a future the place these threatened birds not want rescue.
